Dub
The second Gato’s Sentra came to a stop in the apartment complex parking lot, Dub was out the door. No sense giving Marquise the chance to take more of the merchandise that Dub had snatched.
“Later.” Dub walked away as fast as he dared. If he went any faster, they might realize he had something special hidden in his box.
He slid his mother’s spare key into her apartment door, unlocked it, and stepped into the empty, lonely space. When he’d come home to Wes and Trent’s house in the afternoons after school, Wes would always meet Dub at the door, ask about his day, offer him a snack or drink, and make sure he did his homework. Since Dub had been here, the only thing his mother had asked was whether he had any cash on him. When he said he had none, she’d suggested he might be able to earn a few bucks raking leaves at houses in the neighborhood—bucks they could spend on a set of bedroom furniture for her. Never mind that Dub didn’t even have a mattress and had been sleeping in the recliner. His back was so sore he felt like an old man.
He set the box on the kitchen floor, removed the cartons of cigarettes, and stacked them on the countertop. Then he took the lottery tickets to the bathroom, locked the door just in case his mother got home from work early, and sat down on the closed toilet seat to go to work on the scratch-offs.
Most people used a coin to scratch off the shiny silver surface but, at the moment, Dub literally did not have a penny to his name. Instead, he used his key to Trent and Wes’s house. He figured it might bring him more luck than the key to his mother’s crappy apartment, which so far had only opened the door to regret. But maybe these tickets could change that.
The more expensive tickets probably gave higher payouts, so Dub started with those. He scratched and scratched and scratched, holding the cards over the plastic bag so the residue wouldn’t end up on the floor. Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch. An hour later, he had a bag full of losing tickets and scratch-off shavings.
But he also had a handful of winning tickets worth $865.00.
Wow. The tickets represented more money than he had ever had in his life. They also represented freedom. Nobody knew he had these tickets, and nobody could tell him what to do with the money. The cash would be his to do with as he pleased.
Dub gathered up the tickets and trash and returned to the kitchen. He glanced at the clock on the stove. Two thirty. He’d better cash these tickets before his mother got home and before the store owner could report them stolen and have them voided.
Dub tucked the winning tickets into the ankle of his high-top basketball shoes, grabbed his keys, and went back out the door. Rather than risk running into Marquise, Gato, or Long Dong in the parking lot, he stuck close to the wall so he could exit through the back way by the laundry room. Luck was with him. He saw none of the guys. They were probably in their apartments drinking and smoking their take.
The neighborhood around the complex was still without electricity, but Dub could see lights on in a strip center a half mile down the road. He jogged to the shopping center. Good. The end space was taken up by a convenience store with a lottery decal on its front window.
Dub ducked around the back of the building and pulled out $150 worth of cards. The clerk might become suspicious if Dub tried to cash all the winning cards at once. Better to cash them at several different places.
He removed his hoodie and turned it inside out so the Gainesville State School tornado logo wouldn’t be visible. He’d been stupid to wear the identifiable clothing on the looting spree. Of course, having no other clothing, he’d had no choice. With the cop standing twenty feet away, she probably hadn’t been able to read the words printed on the sweatshirt. Even if she had been able to read them and the police figured out he’d been one of the looters, how would they find him? Nobody had any idea where he’d gone after running away from Trent and Wes’s place and, if the police decided to contact his mother for information, they’d have a hard time finding her. The apartment and phone service were in Dub’s aunt’s name. After defaulting on rent and payday loans and bouncing a dozen checks, his mother’s credit was shot. She’d used her sister’s name and Social Security number to apply for the lease. And even if the police traced his mother to Taco Bell, he doubted his mother had used her real address on her job application. Like Dub, she trusted no one. If the police confronted her at work, she’d lie and say she hadn’t seen Dub since he’d been arrested way back.
Yeah, Dub and his mother were virtually untraceable.
Still, he knew that somehow, some way, his father could find them.
Would find them.
It was only a matter of time …
Forcing the thought from his mind, he stepped up to the checkout stand and laid the tickets on the counter. The guy behind the counter looked from Dub to the tickets then back to Dub. “Got lucky, did ya?”
“Yeah. Very lucky.”
The clerk ran the tickets through the machine to verify them. Once he’d made sure they were all legit, he opened the register and counted out the cash.
“One-twenty, one-forty, one-hundred-and-fifty,” he counted as he slapped the last bills onto the counter.
“Thanks.” Dub scooped up the cash and tucked it into his wallet, the chain that attached it to his pants jingling with the movement.
He left the convenience store and continued down the road, cashing in several more tickets at a car wash, a few more at a large grocery, and the rest at a couple of gas stations.
The $865 in his wallet, he turned to head back to the apartment. He’d walked quite a ways by then, probably two miles or more, and it would get dark soon. He’d noticed a bus go by a few minutes earlier, so it looked like mass transit was running again, at least in this neighborhood. He was headed to the nearest westbound bus stop when he saw it.
An old van sat in the fenced lot of a car repair shop. Its black paint was scratched and scuffed in places, but the words painted on the side in bright yellow were intact. PLUMBING PROBLEMS? CALL (817) 555-CLOG. Next to the words was a smiling cartoon man wielding a toilet plunger.
Dub stepped over to the fence to take a closer look. The van had four bald tires, a single dented hubcap, and a cockeyed front bumper. Expired registration and inspection stickers, too. But it also had the words $400 OBO written on the windshield in white shoe polish.
One of the doors to the three-bay auto repair shop stood half open, a light on inside. Dub let himself in the unlocked gate and walked to the open doorway, ducking to look inside. “Hey!” he called to a man in coveralls working under the hood of a white car. “This van out here. Does it run?”
The man looked over at Dub and stood. He pulled a greasy rag from his pocket and wiped his hands on it. “Yeah. It runs. You interested?”
“Maybe,” came out of Dub’s mouth, though his mind screamed Hell, yeah! If he bought the van, he could use some of his remaining cash to buy lawn care tools and a ladder. Then he could make money raking leaves and trimming bushes and cleaning out gutters. Once the grass began to grow again in spring, he could buy a mower and cut lawns.
It was a short-term plan. He knew it. But his life had never been stable enough to think beyond the immediate future. Or at least it hadn’t been until he’d been placed with Trent and Wes.
But his mother needed him. And she was the only family he had left. He couldn’t turn his back on her. Besides, she seemed to have pulled herself together now.
Maybe there was hope for her. For him. For the two of them to be a real family.
The man walked over, ducked under the door, and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Want to take it for a test drive?”
“Yeah.”
Dub didn’t have a driver’s license, but he’d practiced enough to know how to operate a car. Luckily, the man didn’t ask to see his license. Looking older than he really was had worked in his favor.
The man handed him the keys, slid open a wide panel in the fence, and walked around to the passenger side. Dub climbed into the driver’s seat. The van sat much higher than Wes’s Civic, but was similar to Trent’s Hummer. He should be able to manage it.
Dub stuck the key in the ignition and turned it. The engine hesitated a moment, came to life for a brief second, then sputtered out.
“Pump the gas pedal a couple of times,” the mechanic said.
Dub did as the man had told him to and this time the engine roared to life.
The man pointed down the road. “Drive out onto the street and hook a left.”
Dub slid the gear into drive and pushed lightly on the gas pedal, not sure how much pressure to give it. The van lurched.
The mechanic huffed. “You gotta release the parking brake.”
“Oh. Right.” Dub looked around but saw no hand brake.
The mechanic pointed to a lever under the left side of the dash. “There. Give it a pull.”
Dub pulled back on the handle and noticed the parking brake light go out on the dash. He drove slowly forward, stopping at the edge of the drive, and waited for cross traffic to pass before pulling onto the road.
The engine sounded louder than it should and the van trembled like it was having a seizure, but it made it down the road and around the block without stalling. It even had a quarter tank of gas left in it.
Dub pulled back into the lot of the repair shop, barely missing the fence support.
“Watch it!” the mechanic cried.
“Sorry,” Dub said. “I’m not used to driving something this big.” He pulled to a stop and turned off the engine. “How about three-fifty for the van?”
“The price is four hundred,” the mechanic said.
“Four hundred or best offer,” Dub said, pointing to the OBO written on the windshield. If anyone had offered the seller four hundred the van would have been gone already, right? And OBO meant there was room to haggle. Dub might only be fifteen years old, but he’d seen enough movies to know how these things were supposed to go.
The mechanic frowned. “I put nearly three hundred dollars in parts in the engine. Plus, there’s my time to think about.”
“Three-seventy-five then,” Dub said.
“Nope,” the mechanic replied. “Four hundred or nothing.”
Dub felt his face go hot with anger. Again, he felt cheated and powerless. He wasn’t going to put up with this shit.
“I’m walking.” Leaving the key in the ignition, he opened the driver’s door and climbed out. He thought the mechanic would change his mind, say something. But the man said nothing.
Dub slammed the door behind him and walked to the gate. He looked back to see the man slipping back under the half-closed bay door.
Dammit!
Frustrated and humiliated, Dub turned and stomped back to the door. He bent over to holler under it. “Three ninety-nine!” Asshole.
The mechanic chuckled and waved him in. “Close enough.”
Dub ducked and went inside, where he counted out the money from his wallet. Dub gave the cash to the man and the man handed him two sets of keys for the van.
Dub started to go when the man stopped him. “Hold on, there. You’re forgetting your title.”
The man retrieved a small rectangular certificate from a metal filing cabinet and handed it over. Dub looked down at the paper. It had the word SALVAGE printed on it. He wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but for three hundred and ninety-nine dollars he didn’t much care.
Dub folded the title in half and tucked it into his back pocket. “Do me a solid and put a new inspection sticker on it.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal.”
“Don’t be a dick.”
The man chuckled again. “All right.” He walked over to a drawer, pulled out a current inspection sticker, and handed it to Dub. “You’re on your own for the registration.”